Zulkifli Abdhir

Zulkifli "Marwan" Abdhir (1966-26 January 2015) was a Malaysian member of Jemaah Islamiyah in the Philippines. Responsible for a 2015 plot to kill Pope Francis as he made a visit to the islands, he was killed by the Philippine National Police (PNP) in Mamasapano.

Biography
Zulkifli Abdhir was born in 1966 in Muar, Johore, Malaysia to a Sunni family of Malays. Abdhir spoke Malay, Tagalog, English, and Arabic, speaking English from his engineer training in the United States, Arabic from his experiences as a terrorist, and Tagalog from his time in the Philippines. He became a terrorist and sold bombs to various terrorist groups across the world, and he was told how to make IEDs by Azahari Husin. He hid out in the Philippines, aiding the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist group in Indonesia and the Philippines in addition to Abu Sayyaf, a Philippine group. Since 2003, he hid out in Mindanao, and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) sheltered him.

On 26 January 2015, he planned to assassinate Pope Francis on his papal visit to the Philippines, but changes in the Pope's schedules and the crowded streets prevented JI from carrying out its attack. The same day, Abdhir was tracked down by the Philippine National Police (PNP) to Mamasapano. The Philippine police attacked the JI militants, but soon, the BIFF and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) arrived to fight the PNP. Abdhir was killed alongside 5 other militants, although 44 PNP troops were killed in the firefight. The gunfight between the PNP and MILF threatened to end the peace treaty that the two sides had agreed to on 24 January 2014.